


All Nighter

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, someone looks after Caitlin for a change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 04:26:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14156685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Caitlin was up all night trying to reverse Melting Point's effects. Good thing Cisco is around to make sure she takes care of herself. They also have a conversation about Melting Point, and how he might affect more than just Barry and Iris. A missing moment from 4x16





	All Nighter

It being five in the AM, Cisco thought he’d be the first one in. But when he swung into the cortex, the light in Caitlin’s lab was on. Her terrible hunched-over position and scowl of concentration told him she was ears-deep in something complicated and frustrating, and there was a fifty-fifty chance she would snarl like a bobcat if he interrupted her.

“Heyyyy,” he said, because he liked to live dangerously. “You’re here early. When did you go home last night?” She’d still been working when he’d left.

She lifted her head. “Hmm?”

“Uh,” he said, taking in her Star Labs sweatshirt and yoga pants, swapped from Iris last night, the raccoon-smudginess of her eye makeup, and the four mugs scattered around her lab with varying levels of stone-cold coffee. “No. I’m wrong. You’re here way too fucking late. You didn’t go home at all, did you?”

“Time'zit,” she mumbled.

“Time for Cait to go to sleep,” he said, going over and trying to pull her up by her elbows.

“Noooooo,” she muttered, resisting. “I’ve got to keep going, I -”

“Need sleep,” he said.

“Coffee,” she said, looking around. “I just - coffee. I’ll be good.”

He shifted his morning latte out of her reach. “No. Coffee will prolong the altered state of consciousness that’s killing your brain cells one by one. Sleep will be good.”

She looked up at him. Her lip trembled. “Nothing works,” she said piteously. “I keep trying different things, modeling them in the computer, and I can’t figure out how to replicate what Melting Point did or-or-or how to reverse it - ”

He hugged her around her shoulders. “You’ll figure it out,” he said, grabbing the back of her chair and steering her away from her computer. “After you sleep. You want to sleep up here or use Ralph’s sweaty futon?”

She made a face. “Disgusting. Up here, please.”

“Okay.” He wheeled her chair next to the hospital bed. While she kicked off her shoes and pulled herself up into the bed, he pulled the curtains and sang under his breath. “Rock-a-bye Caitlin, in the med lab - ”

She snorted, and he turned to see her burrito’d up in the blankets. “You’re very sneaky,” she informed him.

“Me? I am nothing but open and honest at all times.”

“Sneaky,” she yawned. “Pretending like it was already a foregone conclusion and I just had to choose which way to do it. The nurses used that technique when I did a rotation in pediatrics.”

“Act like a toddler who doesn’t want to go to bed … ”

She growled into the pillow, yawned again, and snuggled further into the blankets. “Wake me up in two hours.”

“What was that you said? Four hours? I’m thinking more like six.”

“Two hours!” she yelled after him as he shut the door behind him.

* * *

He wasn’t planning to go in and wake her up, but he also wasn’t surprised when the door to the lab clicked open exactly two hours later and she padded out in bare feet, hair a frizzy mess and eyes heavy. They’d seen each other in worse states, so he just double-checked that Ralph was at the other end of the building and didn’t know Caitlin was about to get in the shower.

Killer Frost would probably freeze Ralph’s gonads if he tried to “accidentally” walk in on Caitlin, but they didn’t have time to kick his rubbery ass today. They all had shit to do.

She came back in twenty minutes, in one of the spare Star Labs sweatpants and shirt from the locker by the showers, with her hair all wrapped up in a towel. For a moment, he hoped she was planning to get some more sleep, but she said, “Is that coffee for me?”

“No, they just put your name on it for some reason,” he said, passing it over. It was hot enough to toast his fingertips through the cup. When he’d walked in and said, “I need Caitlin’s usual, the biggest size you have,” the barista had rung him up for a giant latte with two shots of hazelnut without even having to think about it. There were advantages to being such regulars.

“Thank you so much,” she said, sinking into his extra chair. She took a deep drink, closing her eyes and visibly letting the caffeine seep through her veins. Without makeup, she looked even more tired and worn down.

He turned back to his project on the screen. “Hey, I had a look at what you were working on last night.” It had been in her open server, which meant it was fine if he looky-looed.

“Any thoughts?”

“We have a deal,” he said, making some adjustments to his design and considering the effect. “When it gets into high level DNA and whatnot, my main contribution is fixing your centrifuge. But it looks like you’re exploring a bunch of options.”

She sighed and took another deep drink of coffee. “I don’t think I can do it,” she said, staring at the lid, flicking her nail across the little notch in the lid.

“You just need some more - ” Time. Data. Miracles.

“I was running ideas through the modeling software all night. Nothing. I can’t do it. I can’t reverse it.” Her hand clenched around the coffee cup, her nails digging into the cardboard sleeve. “I said I could and I can’t.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Are you going to start howling and throwing things and calling yourself too stupid to live because you couldn’t replicate a DNA swapping meta’s powers overnight?”

She gave him a long, cool look. “No.”

“Good. Because we put up with enough of that nonsense from Harry.”

She set her cup down. “True.” She eyed him. “Although two heads are better than one, and yours is the best one I know, so if you were to help Harry - ”

“Flattery will get you everywhere except there,” he said. “Not happening. I’ve told you this.”

“Then maybe I should help.”

“Are you out of your mind?” She was working herself to the bone trying to figure out Melting Point’s powers, and she wanted to add more on top? No way. Not on his watch.

Plus, Cisco could handle the sneering, condescending way Harry talked in the lab, because he’d refined the art of snapping back. Caitlin acted like she could take it, but it got to her. He knew it did.

She still looked like she was about to go downstairs and offer her help, so he said, “You’ve been working your ass off this year to prove you’re a good little teammate and you’re valuable enough to keep around even with Killer Frost in the mix. Stop it. You don’t need to prove anything.”

Her jaw worked. This was the closest they’d ever come  to acknowledging the load of guilt she carried around with her. Her suspicion that nobody had really forgiven her for last May, not _really_. Her conviction that they were all just waiting for her to betray them, or disagree with someone too vehemently, or simply not pull twice her weight for a split second, and she would be out, gone, booted from Star Labs.

Cisco waited for her to respond.

“I need more information,” she said. “More data points. Is Frye in Iron Heights? If I study his DNA and compare it with Barry’s - ”

Okay. They weren’t going to do it today.

“Or,” he said. “We could find Matthew Kim and ask him to swap them back himself.”

“Do you think he can?”

“If he can’t, you’ll still have him here to study.”

“That’s true,” she said, but she still looked doubtful. “Cisco … ”

“Mmm.”

“What if he can’t? And I can’t. And this swap is permanent?”

The idea fell down between them like a stone - an irreversible change to the fabric of Star Labs. To who pushed and who pulled, who ran out into danger and who stayed behind, keeping a cool head and considering the big picture.

It had been weird yesterday, with Barry here during a situation. Cisco didn’t know whether that was a weirdness he could get used to or not.

“I don’t know,” he said, fiddling with a few details on his screen. “Iris seems to be doing okay. She trained hard and she jumped into the field even if she wobbled some.” He changed a panel’s shape, looked at it, changed it back. “Did she say anything to you when you were patching her up?”

“We talked,” Caitlin acknowledged. “She was pretty shaken by what happened up there. I think she’s enjoying the speed in some ways, but sort of like a vacation, you know? Something new and novel. I don’t know if she’d want to do it forever.”

“Poor Barry,” Cisco said, thinking of Barry’s face as he watched Iris run, purple lightning crackling around her. “Sucks to be him right now.”

“Yes, it must be hard,” Caitlin said. “Disorienting.”

He considered her, remembering that the few times she’d pushed back or said no this year had mostly been related to letting Killer Frost out. “Hey,” he said. “If we get Kim in here - would you want him to take Frost off your hands?”

“No,” she said immediately, without hesitation.

He blinked. “Really.”

“You thought I’d say yes?”

“Frosting up still isn’t your favorite thing ever, you have to admit that.” She was stepping up more easily these days, but he still saw her setting her jaw as she did.

She turned her cup on the table. “First of all,” she said carefully, “Killer Frost has never worked quite like any other meta. So I don’t know if Melting Point’s powers would even work on me. Her. Whatever.”

“Okay, say they did.”

“Then the issue is different. It’s not like the powers dissolve or something when Melting Point takes them away,” she said. “They get transferred to the next person he touches. What if you suddenly got an evil alter ego? Or Harry?”

Reverb, Cisco thought, and pushed that away. “Alter-ego Meta Harry might actually be nice.”

“Or even meaner.” She sipped her coffee again and shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t like having her here, exactly. But I’m learning how to handle her.” She grimaced. “And getting to this point has been bad enough. Someone else would start right at the beginning. So no. I wouldn’t want Melting Point to give Killer Frost to someone else.”

Interesting way of putting it, he thought, but said aloud, “Fair. Very fair.”

“What are you working on?” she said.

Subject: changed. “So I got to thinking this morning. Iris is going to need a suit of her own if this keeps up for very long. Regular clothes just don't hold up to Flash speed, much less crazy Central City metas.”

She made a mournful face. “My sweater was trashed, it’s true. All smokey and torn - Iris felt so bad.”

“Yep. So I pulled up Jesse’s basic speedster suit, made a few adjustments and - ” He turned his monitor so she could see.

“Purple!” Caitlin exclaimed.

“Cuz of the color of her lightning,” Cisco said. “You like?”

“Yes,” she said. “Oh. That’s a great color on Iris.”

“It’ll do for a Version 1.0, anyway,” he said, sending some of the components to the 3-D printer and hitting a few buttons to whip up some dye for the suit material.

She tipped up her coffee and drank the last few drops. “Okay,” she said. “I need to do my hair and makeup, and then get back to work.”

He leaned down and grabbed a plastic bag. “Hey, I grabbed you an outfit.”

“From where?” she asked, taking it. “I’ve worn all the extra outfits I have stored here.”

“Your place. You remember when you gave me your key so I could water your plants?”

“Did you really use the key?”

“No,” he said. “But I figured it was carte blanche to breach in when you needed something. Was that okay?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “I’ll answer that when I gauge the cuteness of the outfit you picked.”

“I think it’s very cute,” he said cheerfully. “But hey, you could hang around all day in Star Labs sweats if you want.” He started to reach for the bag.

She clutched it to herself. “I’ll make it work,” she said, and headed for the bathroom. “Thank you!” she shouted over her shoulder.

“Anytime!” he yelled back, already pulling out the suit material and his faithful dress form.

As he pinned and tacked the Iris suit together, he wondered what Caitlin would do if there was ever a chance to lose her Killer Frost side for good.

FINIS


End file.
